The following abbreviations are herewith defined, at least some of which are referred to within the following description of the prior art and the present invention.    CDMA Code-Division Multiple Access    FIR Finite Impulse Response    HSPA High-Speed Packet Access    QAM Quadrature Amplitude Modulation    UMTS Universal Mobile Telecommunications Service    WCDMA Wideband Code-Division Multiple Access
In the 3rd Generation cellular system known as WCDMA or UMTS, there is currently a HSPA method under specification for transmitting higher data rates from a mobile phone to a network (or base station). The HSPA transmission uses an approach called “Multi-code CDMA”. In this Multi-code CDMA system, each data symbol is spread out in time and spectrum by combining it with a spreading code. On the downlink (base station to mobile phone), the codes used to transmit signals from the base station are coordinated at the base station so that they are mutually orthogonal. In contrast, in the uplink (mobile phone to base station), the coordination needed between different mobile phones to achieve orthogonality is considered too difficult to implement, so each mobile phone uses a different random code sequence.
However, at each mobile phone, it is still possible to generate several random code sequences that are coordinated among themselves to be mutually orthogonal. Each of these orthogonal codes may then carry a symbol sub-stream so that the combined symbol stream rate is enhanced. But, in this situation, the mobile phone's available transmitter power is going to be divided between the different codes which means that the range over which each sub-stream may be successfully received and decoded error free is going to be reduced. In fact, the reduction of power per each sub-stream in a multi-code modulation signal transmitted from a mobile phone is worse than would be expected by merely dividing the transmitter power by the total number of sub-streams. This is because it is not so much the average power that is constrained by battery voltage, but rather the peak signal amplitude, which happens to be limited by the battery voltage.
Thus, in the 3rd Generation cellular system there is a desire for a modulation scheme which develops the greatest mean power per sub-stream within a constraint of the composite peak signal amplitude of all sub-streams. For example, if the mobile phone used a three-code multicode scheme with three length=4 codes where each code carries a sub-stream of 16 QAM symbols at similar amplitude, then the total mean power that is transmitted within a given peak amplitude constraint is 7.32 dB below the peak before filtering to contain the spectrum, and the mean power per sub-stream is 12.1 dB below the peak. Filtering generally increases the peak-to-rms ratio further. The HSPA standard describes an improvement over the three length=4 spreading code scheme since it specifies a length=2 code of twice the power (√2times the amplitude) which carries two symbols in the same time period that a superimposed and orthogonal length=4 code carries a third symbol, which effectively achieves the same symbol rate as three length=4 codes. This 4+(2,2) configuration is able to develop a total mean power which is 5.44 dB below the peak, and is 1.88 dB more effective than the 4+4+4 configuration associated with the three length=4 spreading code scheme. Although the 4+(2,2) configuration works well, it is still desirable for the mobile phone to be able to further reduce the ratio of the peak to mean power when transmitting multi-code modulation signals. This need and other needs are addressed by a transmitter and a method of the present invention.